Spring has Sprung

Spring has sprung which has brought a rush of activity around the house. Not much time for play during the last few weeks. Beck and I have been working feverishly getting ready for garden production by building raised beds, moving 10 yards of soil across the yard to fill them, building a sizable green house, tilling existing garden beds, doubling the size of our chicken run to accommodate 13 new laying hens and moving the shed from the front yard to the back (which took 15 people to lift and carry 120 ft, a monumental accomplishment). For the lower 48 this may seem late for starting agricultural activities. For interior AK it's right on time. The deciduous trees are just now filling out with leaves and the first flowers of the season just started popping up days ago. The game plan is to finish all the busy work, get the garden started and chicks established then it's playtime for the rest of the summer. Ahhhh..... Play time in the summer.....coming soon.

Winter Turns to Spring

Winter finally turned to Spring a few weeks back. It feels good. The sun is back in the sky longer than we can stay awake. Buds are coming out on the Aspen and Birch trees trying to turn the forest from brown to green. Migratory birds are slowly showing up for their summer mating rituals and filling the air with songs. One of the grandest benefits of spring is the opening up of once frozen rivers. In the Fairbanks area most of the rivers are just now becoming ice free. Some rivers, such as the Delta Clearwater, open and are free of ice sooner than others. Because of this the Delta Clearwater tends to be the traditional first trip of the season for many boaters.

Becky and I normally float the river as a day trip but this year we decided to join a group of friends and turn it into an over night trip. It turned out to be one of the nicest weekends we've seen in a long time. There was not a cloud in the sky and the temperatures got as high as the mid-70s.

Becky solo paddling an Ally canoe.

First flowers of the season.

My lovely bride keeping me out of trouble.

My Peeps Are In The House

As many of you know, Becky and I got 9 laying hens last May from some friends of ours. They raised the birds from chickhood so they were full grown and already laying eggs when we got them. That made for a nice gradual transition into raising birds. This is most likely the last summer for most of the flock since they are getting old and their egg production is dropping.... I have a feeling we will be eating lots of chicken soup this winter. Keeping chickens in the arctic is not necessarily easy in the winter when it's -40F for weeks on end, but it's fun. When summer finally comes around and the ladies are able to be let loose in the run it's even more enjoyable. With that in mind, this year I could not resist getting more chickens.One of the local feed stores in town sales day old baby chicks this time of year so I went down and picked some up. We got a variety of breeds primarily based on egg production and cold hardness. Those are what I call my business birds because they are doing what they were hired to do. We also got a Polish for her fashion statement with her crazy head feathers. She is still pretty small so her adult plumage has not developed yet but when it does she will look like someone combed her hair with a firecracker. We started out by getting just 9 chicks just barely larger than a fuzzy golf ball. A week went by before I lost all restraint and went back for 4 more. We now have 13 chicks and 8 adult birds.

The pictures above were taken just after we got them. They've doubled in size in the last week and a half and started flapping their wings. All our ladies are layers so we won't be eating them any time soon but each time they stretch their wings I can't help but picture them covered in hot sauce on a plate with ranch dressing.